“Miss Lassiter,” She repeated, rolling her eyes before taking another heavy swig of whiskey and chasing the calm that it brought. Regan needed it—anything to quench her burning insecurity. The nagging neediness for her king. The missing Warren, the physical hunger that had her eyes looking at Aldrich a little too freely as he reached for the whiskey. It would be enough for Aldrich to notice as her cheeks flushed scarlet. A tiny, needy noise rumbled in the back of her throat.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Regan smirked, raising an eyebrow and relinquishing the whiskey bottle. She lay back on her elbows, staring up at him, smile fading for a moment before she said softy:

“You’re, uh, keeping that whole, uh, ‘dog’ thing to yourself, yeah? I don’t want people, uh, asking questions…” It wasn’t accusatory—quite the opposite. Regan’s eyes were big and needy as she bit the inside of her cheek in uncertainty.

No, the wink didn’t help.

Regan met Aldrich’s eyes with equal intensity as if she might fall into them if she looked deep enough. She believed him when he said he’d keep her secret to himself. Really, there wasn’t much Aldrich had to go on, but if he started asking questions—particularly with Alys’s proverbial cat out of the bag—it would be enough to make Regan’s world more complicated than it already was. Still blushing, Regan nodded, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a girlish smile.

“So…we’re friends then?”

Regan laughed, nearly what could be called a giggle, and half-crawled, half-scooted forward on the floor so that she was close enough to Aldrich so that she could reach for the whiskey bottle. If she was successful in taking it, she’d take another swig as she sat back at his feet.

“And what does ‘friends’ look like exactly?” Regan’s words dropped with a slight lazy slur from her tongue through a lopsided smirk.

Regan’s breath quickened as Aldrich’s fingers ran themselves through her hair. Her eyes turned upward, hazy and needy as they drank in every handsome detail of Aldrich’s features.

“I don’t know…” She murmured, leaning into his hand. The whiskey made what she wanted impossible to conceal, just as it made it impossible to keep her next works from quietly tripping out of her mouth.

“Listen, you weren’t wrong about how I—about what you said about Warren,” the word she was looking for wouldn’t quite make it out of her mouth, but it made itself known all the same. Even as she spoke, Regan didn’t pull away from him. If anything she drew closer.

Regan was not one who often resisted temptation. She’d never stopped being a greedy little orphan seizing onto any scrap of affection that was tossed her way. Not to mention that physical hunger that gnawed at her unsatisfied. Regan looked up at Aldrich with wide eyes and a furrowed brow as if she were doing some sort of complicated calculus in her head.

Eventually, Regan nodded to answer both of his questions as one. Somehow the words to explain just how complicated things were wouldn’t come. Regan didn’t have the sophistication of feeling or processing that would accurately describe just how much of a tangle all this was. So instead, Regan would weave her fingers into Aldrich’s other hand as she closed her eyes and nuzzled into his touch.

Regan let herself be lulled by Aldirch’s presence. Let him soothe the irritation of her separation from Cassian that still festered like a splinter. She wanted to believe him: that she didn’t owe anyone her loyalty. But she remembered the look on Warren’s face when she’d told him that she could never be his entirely, and even now it twisted in her like a knife. She retreated from the discomfort, focusing instead on the sureness of Adrich’s hand on her cheek.

At his question, Regan’s eyes snapped open. She stared at him, for a moment sparks shimmering in their depths. It was as if the wolf had come when called by name, requiring Regan to stifle it. Her next words were careful—soft, but certain.

“I won’t answer that,” Regan whispered, “I can’t.”